There is Nothing False About Hope
I was pissed this morning.
I woke up pissed. I was pissed when I left for work. I was pissed when I got to work and not much that happened at work this morning improved my mood.
There's a little exercise I engage in when I'm in this kind of a mood. I try to post a positive-themed quote to Facebook and Twitter, just to put something positive in the air. If I can articulate something positive and put it on the internet, sometimes it makes me feel better. Sometimes people give me positive feedback about it, which helps me be even more positive.
Today the first quote I thought of was from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. The quote is "it comes down to a simple choice: either get busy living or get busy dying."
The problem with this quote, however, is that it seems to endorse suicide, which is the last thing I wanted to do. Then I remembered an earlier part of the film, when Tim Robbin's character said,"the one thing they can't take away from you is hope."
Another character said,"hope is dangerous." As I was replaying this scene in my head, another quote entered my head,"There is no such thing as false hope." It wasn't from Shawshank, but from the TV series The West Wing, spoken by fictional Presidential canidate Matt Santos(played by Jimmy Smits).
I liked that thought, so I just tweaked it a little bit. What I posted was: there is nothing false about hope.
I thought it was a good, positive thought that was worth posting to the internet. Someone, however, suggested that hope is false.
This individual, taking up the argument of Morgan Freeman's character from Shawshank, suggested that when people hope for things and those hopes don't come to fruition it is worse than if they never hoped at all.
I have to admit that I felt a great swell of pity for everyone who thinks that's true. Yes, not every hope becomes reality. Yes, that can feel bad. I do not think that makes hope false. I think hope is what makes some things possible. I think being able to hope is what allows us to make our dreams come true. To hope for and envision things is the first step in making them come true.
I don't think not hoping is a good response to the world. Yes, the world is not always a kind and happy place. The Buddha had good reason to say that all life is sorrowful, because life does have a good deal of sorrow in it.
Everyday unfortunate and unhappy things happen that tempt us to believe that we live on a vale of sorrow. However, I think the real truth is life is filled with both lots of sorrow and lots of joy. My life has been filled with lots of happiness, just as it has been with sorrow. I have had a lot of glorious victories in addition to the tragic defeats.
I think that holding on to hope, to have the courage to hope that things will get better if we try, is part of the key to making things better.
No, hope by itself doesn't solve everything. But I believe that if we don't have the courage to hope there is no chance that things will ever get better. So, yes, I believe that hope is never really false. The act of having hopes is an act of courage. It is the courage to beleive, to dream, to have faith and to perservere.
I think that daring to hope is one of the best and most courageous things we can do. I also believe that is the first step any of us can do to make our lives and our world better.
I hope, more than anything, that everyone everywhere who feels themselves in the grip of despair can find the courage to have hope. If nothing else, to have hope that things can get better than they are.
I woke up pissed. I was pissed when I left for work. I was pissed when I got to work and not much that happened at work this morning improved my mood.
There's a little exercise I engage in when I'm in this kind of a mood. I try to post a positive-themed quote to Facebook and Twitter, just to put something positive in the air. If I can articulate something positive and put it on the internet, sometimes it makes me feel better. Sometimes people give me positive feedback about it, which helps me be even more positive.
Today the first quote I thought of was from the movie The Shawshank Redemption. The quote is "it comes down to a simple choice: either get busy living or get busy dying."
The problem with this quote, however, is that it seems to endorse suicide, which is the last thing I wanted to do. Then I remembered an earlier part of the film, when Tim Robbin's character said,"the one thing they can't take away from you is hope."
Another character said,"hope is dangerous." As I was replaying this scene in my head, another quote entered my head,"There is no such thing as false hope." It wasn't from Shawshank, but from the TV series The West Wing, spoken by fictional Presidential canidate Matt Santos(played by Jimmy Smits).
I liked that thought, so I just tweaked it a little bit. What I posted was: there is nothing false about hope.
I thought it was a good, positive thought that was worth posting to the internet. Someone, however, suggested that hope is false.
This individual, taking up the argument of Morgan Freeman's character from Shawshank, suggested that when people hope for things and those hopes don't come to fruition it is worse than if they never hoped at all.
I have to admit that I felt a great swell of pity for everyone who thinks that's true. Yes, not every hope becomes reality. Yes, that can feel bad. I do not think that makes hope false. I think hope is what makes some things possible. I think being able to hope is what allows us to make our dreams come true. To hope for and envision things is the first step in making them come true.
I don't think not hoping is a good response to the world. Yes, the world is not always a kind and happy place. The Buddha had good reason to say that all life is sorrowful, because life does have a good deal of sorrow in it.
Everyday unfortunate and unhappy things happen that tempt us to believe that we live on a vale of sorrow. However, I think the real truth is life is filled with both lots of sorrow and lots of joy. My life has been filled with lots of happiness, just as it has been with sorrow. I have had a lot of glorious victories in addition to the tragic defeats.
I think that holding on to hope, to have the courage to hope that things will get better if we try, is part of the key to making things better.
No, hope by itself doesn't solve everything. But I believe that if we don't have the courage to hope there is no chance that things will ever get better. So, yes, I believe that hope is never really false. The act of having hopes is an act of courage. It is the courage to beleive, to dream, to have faith and to perservere.
I think that daring to hope is one of the best and most courageous things we can do. I also believe that is the first step any of us can do to make our lives and our world better.
I hope, more than anything, that everyone everywhere who feels themselves in the grip of despair can find the courage to have hope. If nothing else, to have hope that things can get better than they are.
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